Time to Ask the Author

I asked @JeannetteDeBeauvoir why she chose to write mysteries. Here's her reply: 👇

❝I write mysteries partly because they’re a lot of fun to write (they are!), but also for some deeper reasons. We like to see justice done, especially when we perceive that the real world isn’t playing fair with us. If the guilty party is caught and punished in the fiction we read, then perhaps we regain the sense of order that’s lost whenever we hear the news. Every day, we see situations that have us baffled, and our minds seek to cope with them: it often feels that everything is getting way too far out of control. Reading about Inspector Whatever arresting the culprit restores a little harmony, a little control, a little of a feeling of safety.

It’s a truism that being exposed in a benign way to something we fear allows us to vicariously experience—and deal with our terror of—things that go bump in the night. It explains the popularity of horror flicks … and it also contributes to our love of murder mysteries. They provide an intellectual exercise as well as giving us that frisson, that ability to dip our toes into the cold water and squeal and then go back to Real Life... even as we gently confront our fear that death will actually happen to us.❞

(by Darcia Helle on Instagram)